Only 2% of the playerbase have killed Garrosh...

The charts posted on the frontpage show that although approximately 60% of the playerbase seems to raid (LFR included), it appears that only 2% of those are actually doing flex or normal-mode raiding.

Back in TBC 2% was approximately the number of players that cleared Sunwell and in Vanilla this similarly was the number of players that cleared Naxx40. This was the elite of the elite, best of the best, in those days.

It's rather odd to see that Flex and Normal mode raiding has become just as exclusive as cutting edge progress raiding was back in those days.

It's also pretty obvious how people are very much not interested in organized raiding or raidshedules and that many people stopped normal mode raiding the moment LFR was added to the game.

Perhaps Blizzard would be smart to recognize this and to start focussing on making LFR / queueable content more the main content and reward of the game than expecting people to commit to raidguilds and their shedules.

Mod edit: Changed title to reflect actual situation

Last edited by chaud; 2013-10-21 at 07:41 PM.

Misbehave, Misbehave, Misbehave. Misbehave because you are not a puppet or a robot, but a human being that can experience the world from different perspectives. "But misbehaving is the first sin! When we are children we are told so! Even in the Bible we got cast out of Eden because Eve misbehaved!"
Cogs, robots and machines aren't allowed to misbehave. Are you trying to become a machine then?

The raid has only been out 6 weeks, and you aren't taking into account the players that are still progressing in normal/flex. The normal mode numbers in particular will be significantly different by the end of the expansion, and will look much less exclusive.

I think looking at the numbers now is far too soon. If in a month or two time only 2% have done it then perhaps you are onto something. But I forsee easily 10+% doing flex and around 5 or so completing normal minimum.

Originally Posted by gamma Ray

What if there was a second spitter!

Originally Posted by Goldscar

I guess you'll have to speak to the fair-dating commission in your area then.

First of all, doesn't that chart only count the final boss kills? If so, I don't think you should expect that more than a small amount of players have cleared Siege of Orgrimmar yet.

Originally Posted by Anarchor

Perhaps Blizzard would be smart to recognize this and to start focussing on making LFR / queueable content more the main content and reward of the game than expecting people to commit to raidguilds and their shedules.

No, just no. I only raid LFR and Flex, and even I think this would be a terrible idea. People still do and enjoy doing normals and heroics. That's enough to warrant Blizzard to continue making that content. Believe me, if Blizzard dropped the hardest difficulties of PvE, the backlash would be so incredibly game-shattering that the servers would likely shut down years before they would if Blizzard kept making them. Isn't that obvious?

I think you've read that entirely out of context. The last flex wing only opened a few days ago and the final LFR wing opens this week. Those numbers will dramatically rise.

In our guilds case, we lfr on our own time and do Flex on our old raid days. The reason we don't do normal 10 on those days anymore, we can take 13,14,15 people now where as the extra players would have missed out. We do normals on our casual sundays now where we have 10 only due to family and other commitments. And because we know the fights fairly well, we are flying through those.

For us, flex is working as intended. I wouldn't get too worked up. If in a months time the numbers are still the same, I'll join you in being a little concerned.

Or meby simple becous its show how meny CHARACTERS not PLAYERS (personal got 6 90s and killed Garosh only on 1) killed Garosh on any difficulty level atm and it show that His harder boss then other 13 in SoO, what is good becous its show that ther is styll challenge in raiding Flex not just go faceroll boss, get loot, log out and next whine that there is nothing to do in this game any more.

You're misreading the information and, before even looking into possibly more information in the comments attached TO the topic, you make an uninformed post. Research, man!

Originally Posted by chaud

As far as where the raiders are, most can't complete Siege of Orgrimmar on Raid Finder yet, as the last wing isn't open. The last wing just opened on flex this week, so most flex raiders may not have done it yet. The previous raids have had months of time and cross realm groups going on for a while now, which is also part of why they are higher.

Chaud, the creator of that graph, says it himself: The 2% you're seeing is people who have COMPLETED SoO. Currently that's only normal, heroic and flex (as of this week). The raid is still very fresh and people take time to complete it. If Chaud were to update this thing at the end of the expansion, you'd have a much clearer view of the raid base.

You were certainly pretty quick to jump on the "GOD BLIZZARD SCREWED UP, THEY SHOULD DO MY IDEA BECAUSE I'M SMARTER" bandwagon.

Or meby simple becous its show how meny CHARACTERS not PLAYERS (personal got 6 90s and killed Garosh only on 1) killed Garosh on any difficulty level atm and it show that His harder boss then other 13 in SoO, what is good becous its show that ther is styll challenge in raiding Flex not just go faceroll boss, get loot, log out and next whine that there is nothing to do in this game any more.

Nope, that's accounted for (6m chars on 2.5m accts), and it's by account, not character. They can tell which accounts have multiple active 90s. Each account has a unique identifier in the armory database (snooping this value allows you to tell if people are trolling their own threads on the official forums).

OMG 13:37 - Then Jesus said to His disciples, "Cleave unto me, and I shall grant to thee the blessing of eternal salvation."

Wow, so since I havn't completed SoO yet I must not be a raider. Good job OP.

Btw, I hate LFR and everything it stands for. You have my pity.

According to http://www.wowprogress.com/ only 21% of raiding guilds (those which have attempted Immerseus; 4122) have killed Normal mode Garrosh, or about 72,135 (1.2%) people (given an even split between 10 and 25 man raid comps.) Compare this to roughly 5 times that number of guilds actively progressing in SoO-- 360,175 (6%) people.

As mentioned these numbers should go up, and excludes WoW in Asia and Flex. If we assume Chaud accurately reports about 0.8% (most likely more) success from Flex and that about 2% is accurate, then we're looking at a whopping 10% or higher number for people currently raiding Flex and Normal mode SoO. Add to that the fact these guilds are more than likely to be successful downing Garrosh before expanion's end, you're looking at raiding being nearly (at least) FIVE TIMES as popular as it was in Vanilla. And this is excluding WoW Asia numbers as well!

It's a gross overstatement to say LFR is king of raiding, this early, and disregarding the complete picture.

comparing tot lfr with soo flex (currently the minimum difficulty you can complete the instance) is ridiculous and i will only briefly explain why because it should be amazingly obvious.

tot lfr: huge nerf to all bosses. you can literally queue, /follow and go afk and you can get the dungeon completed. it is super old and super out-geared - especially with the nerf.
soo flex: still very fresh content. a lot of average raiders are still progressing normal. just.. dude.

compare tot completion 6 weeks after 5.4 with soo completion 6 weeks after 6.0. those numbers might be more realistic.

The charts posted on the frontpage show that although approximately 60% of the playerbase seems to raid (LFR included), it appears that only 2% of those are actually doing flex or normal-mode raiding.

Back in TBC 2% was approximately the number of players that cleared Sunwell and in Vanilla this similarly was the number of players that cleared Naxx40. This was the elite of the elite, best of the best, in those days.

Well in all reality the numbers like that aren't surprising. It just shows that the player base that enjoys organized raiding are about the same and haven't declined or anything.

Mmm... removing the normal and heroic raiding would just be silly. I know a lot of guilds that start out incredibly slow. This is only counting those raiders who have CLEARED this entire raid. Currently I'm 8/14 heroic myself and even then I can tell you that Garrosh is not exactly an easy fight. For me and my guild it seems that way... but that's because heroic raiders tear through normal modes like nothing. Those who raid flex or normal mode only will need a significantly longer amount of time to kill the bosses than those that focus on heroic and kill it in the first week. Imagine that those doing flex are most likely the same people who did LFR before. Even though flex is easier than normal it is no joke. I've done all the fights up to date on flex and LFR and the difference is huge. Thok doesn't one-shot you in LFR when he runs over you, Spoils has less stuff to kill in LFR. Big changes like that really make LFR seem like a loot grabbing system for those who can't be bother to figure things out.

If anything I feel like they should be attempting to push players OUT of LFR and into flex mode at the least. Flex doesn't take up that much time and many of the bosses are fairly easy. This last Tuesday when Flex 4 came out I led a group of mostly random people and none of them besides me had ever experienced the last three fights. We ended up clearing to Garrosh with minimal wipes. Siegecrafter was a one shot (although he's pretty easy in normal as well) and Paragons was a two shot.

It's a tricky situation I suppose and as a heroic raider I'd probably be shooting myself in the foot but I wish they would close LFR out entirely TBH. I know at this point it basically funds the raids but I feel that as a whole it's toxic to the game's community. With the proper tools (an in-game version of something like oQueue with improvements would be great. More on this later) I feel that flex could easily replace LFR if tuned properly while still allowing for a more difficult experience as the grouping nature of the mode allows for more dynamic choices to be made as well as a reliable and reasonable expectation of group communication.

As for the grouping tool well it could be fairly simple. Show progress through raids (Flex, normal, and heroic) of all tiers this expansion with the dates of bosses killed on the list IF the person decides to look more into it. For example, Group leader looks at LFG tool system and sees a 555 ilvl death knight. He notices that this player has cleared all of ToT on heroic. It would simply say Throne of Thunder 13/13 H. Now if that leader wanted to, he could click on ToT and see a list of the date for each boss kill the player got. This would only be applicable if somebody was showing off their previous heroic kills, but only managed to pull it off because they had this tier's gear. It would show specs as well, although if the off spec used a different gear set up it wouldn't be able to show that. The group leader then can whisper that person any time and a special chat channel would be devoted specifically to this tool. So how you see G for guild (default green) and P for party (default blue) you'd see LFG or something like that for this. For those of you who think this would be rather annoying, you would only be eligible for messaging if you queue yourself in this manner.

This tool would work in reverse as well. Those not fond of waiting can seek partially full groups who queue themselves up as well. It would show the group lead's name and how many players are currently in the line up. If clicked on, it would then show each member and their ilvl. The raider could then whisper the group lead to get more information and a possible invite.

Overall this would take a little more time than LFR (although it might be faster since players decide the groups instead of random matchmaking system which could take longer) but I feel like the impact would be beneficial for the community as a whole.

How can people call themselves raiders when they haven't managed to kill him on normal mode or flex mode by now yet?

I guess even that alone shows how much more casual everything has become since when I raided. :P

Misbehave, Misbehave, Misbehave. Misbehave because you are not a puppet or a robot, but a human being that can experience the world from different perspectives. "But misbehaving is the first sin! When we are children we are told so! Even in the Bible we got cast out of Eden because Eve misbehaved!"
Cogs, robots and machines aren't allowed to misbehave. Are you trying to become a machine then?